This is the first part of a two part article taken from our newsletter on fighting job cuts. You can download it from here or request copies here

LUL management’s actions are creating problems for staff in all functions. RMT will be producing a series of leaflets giving detail, information and advice for members in each area. Here is a summary:

Stations
Station staff have been hammered since OSP slashed staffing level. Even if some posts are restored, management’s plan is to stretch us further and work us even harder.
To prepare for this, management are leaving duties uncovered, vacancies unfilled and station unstaffed, and repeatedly try to get staff to work outside the rules.

• more on Stations.

Ticket Offices
LUL seems to think it can run without ticket-selling staff, especially as it develops its latest plan for ‘Wave And Pay’. But while we still have fares, we will still need staff to help passengers with paying for them and helping them when they can’t.

Revenue Control
RMT recently stopped management plans to cut 50 RCI posts, but we expect this proposal to return next year.
The company is also considering placing RCIs in the Special Requirements Team and getting them to cover Station Supervisor duties, which would threaten SS jobs and see RCIs become part of a larger mobile workforce.

• more on revenue control.

Casualisation

Read more about how the London Transport region of the RMT is fighting all job cuts in all grades here

In 2008, after RMT and TSSA called a three-day strike, the unions reached an agreement with LU management to halt further casualisation of LU’s staffing.
But the company is now breaking important aspects of that deal: counting ICSAs towards minimum station staffing numbers (and deploying them in roles and station areas where they should not be); planning to introduce ‘mobile supervision’ of the ex-Silverlink stations; and still using agency staff on some Bakerloo and District line stations.

RMT is in dispute with LUL about this, is refusing to cooperate with LUL’s misuse of ICSAs, and will consider stepping up our action if a new round of talks does not see LUL backing down.

• more on the threat of casualisation here.
• email station&revenuegrades@rmtlondoncalling.org.uk for more details.

Drivers
LUL tries to reassure us that it has no plans to introduce driverless trains ‘for now’, but the company still has it in mind for the future.
It is also trying to use automation to de-skill our job, and to deploy drivers over a wider area – for example, using the new S stock as a pretext to make drivers work on all the subsurface lines.
RMT is resisting every move to deskilling or wider deployment: we have important lines of principle that we will not let management cross.

The union is currently balloting Bakerloo and Central drivers demanding the retention of physical detrainment before going into sidings. And we continue to ask drivers to defy the unsafe OSN101 by sticking to the previous procedures.

• more info for drivers on www.rmtuofront.org.uk
• Email for more info - traingrades@rmtlondoncalling.org.uk

The next part of this article will cover the issues faced by Fleet, Engineering, Service Control, Admin staff and Duty managers.